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Roy Campbell, John Davidson, and "The Tlaming Terrapin"

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Roy Campbell, John Davidson, and "The Tlaming Terrapin" D. S. J. PARSONS IN MANY WAYS, John Davidson (1857-igog), a contributor to The Yellow Book and a member of the Rhymers' Club, was a typical late Victorian minor poet. Tennysonian and Pre-Raphaelite echoes abound in his collections of ballads, songs, and "Fleet Street" eclogues; continually his work is shot through with strains of Thomas Carlyle, Lord Byron, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde. Occasionally, however, he exhibited modernity in his use of language and choice of subject matter. Both T. S. Eliot and Hugh McDiarmid acknowledged the influence upon them of this as• pect of Davidson's poetry.1 In his comments, McDiarmid also indicated approvingly how a forceful individualism and a pas• sionately exacting temperament led Davidson in the last phase of his career to produce a poetry that treated science within a framework of Nietzschean and materialist philosophy. Another admirer of Davidson was the South African poet Roy Campbell.2 He too was especially struck by these last works of Davidson's, with results that are demonstrable in The Flaming Terrapin. As a youth at Oxford in ìgig, Roy Campbell had read Nietzsche eagerly and from then on was greatly affected by his ideas.3 One of the major results of Campbell's desire to convey Nietzsche's spirit and views in his own writing was his search for possible models expressive of Nietzsche in the work of other writers, principally Bernard Shaw and John Davidson. Shaw drew from Nietzsche in combining the doctrine of the superman with creative evolution and Davidson did so in linking heroic vitalism with materialism. Though Campbell was a great admirer of Shaw when he wrote The Flaming Terrapin (ig22-24), it is Davidson's mixture of heroic vitalism and materialism that informs the ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 24:3, July 1993 76 D. S. J. PARSONS poem and establishes that for its philosophy Campbell was in• debted more to Davidson than anyone else. In 1925, following his return to South Africa, Campbell gave a public lecture in Durban entided "Modern Poetry and Contem• porary History."4 He was able to give it because of the interna• tional reputation he had gained from The Flaming Terrapin, his one major published poem at that point. On inspection it be• comes apparent that, despite the generality of its title, this lec• ture was intended to act as an indirect but triumphal commentary on The Flaming Terrapin. What initially alerts one to this relationship is the amount of space it devotes to the ideas and example of Nietzsche. What is more, most of the literary figures mentioned in the lecture are in some way linked with Nietzsche, particularly those receiving the fullest treatment (Wilfred Owen, Bernard Shaw, D. H. Lawrence, Marinetti, and the Wheels group, especially the Sitwell brothers). What is further arresting is the very positive and relatively full assessment of John Davidson, someone undoubt• edly affected by Nietzsche and often regarded as a Nietzschean. It is through the connections made between Nietzsche and Shaw, and those implied between Nietzsche and Davidson and be• tween Davidson and Shaw, that the relevance of the lecture to The Flaming Terrapin can first be discerned and the poem's relation• ship to English Nietzscheanism can be recognized. When treating Davidson, Campbell begins by stressing his philosophic and "religious" message: "He set himself the task of Lucretius—or of the author of Job—to formulate from the vast material universe a spiritual guide: to create a dynamic religion from his own scientific knowledge of the earth ..." (4:175). After turning to Davidson's poetic achievement and influence, he reverts to emphasis on his scientism by saying in conclusion, "He was one of the few poets who grappled with the Darwinian idea of evolution, instead of taking refuge with the old religion" (4: 178). In his summary of Nietzsche, Campbell likewise provides a judgement blending moral philosophy, religion, and evolution• ism. In doing so, he goes some distance in order to accommodate Nietzsche's philosophy to that of creative evolution: ROY CAMPBELL AND JOHN DAVIDSON 77 [Nietzsche] wanted new values, new morals, which would allow the human soul to realise its fullest powers. He specifies his own inter• pretation of the holy ghost as the will-to-power. The inborn life-force which exercises itself in intellectual strife against existing codes and morals gradually shaping them to its own use.. so he desired us to set sail with the fair wind of his grand individualistic philosophy— philosophy for the land which he thought he had discovered. His aim is towards the highest perfection. Though we may never reach this goal—the archetype of an ideal man—nevertheless it is to be our aim though it may still be far away in eternity. (4: 178) Because of the popularity at the time of the philosophy of creative evolution and his own enthusiasm for Shaw as its main exponent in England, Campbell states shortly after this passage: Recendy there have been many poets with similar views. Walt Whitman and Bernard Shaw, Samuel Butler, the author of Erewhon. They are the creative evolutionists who have endeavoured to give a religious stimulation to the theory of evolution. (4: 179) This rather strange coupling of "recent" poets with non-poets also occurs with respect to Davidson, except that this time Shaw alone is named: "John Davidson is not a popular poet, and he never will be; but as an inspirer of other poets he will live for ever. His influence on Shaw and other forerunners of the modern movement has been immense" (4:175). The Flaming Terrapin and Campbell's statements about it give grounds for thinking that he wished to be counted not only among those generally inspired by Nietzsche but also among those more particularly indebted to Davidson. Nietzsche, though frequently poetic, had not used poetic form to express his doctrine of the Overman; neither had Shaw in presenting his superman. Interestingly, later in his lecture Camp• bell comments wistfully, "Bernard Shaw is to my mind the great• est philosopher of our times; it is very much to be regretted that he is not a poet" (4: 184). It might be surmised, then, that Campbell felt he had to be guided by John Davidson's poems on evolution—his hymns to Matter—as the main models for his treatment of the theme in The Flaming Terrapin. Aspects of David• son's poems that Campbell would have found congenial, in addition to the combination of Nietzschean vitalism and volun- taristic evolutionism, would have been the abundance of geologi- 78 D. S. J. PARSONS cal and biological imagery; the employment of a self-created myth uniquely incorporating Judeo-Christian and classical mo• tifs; the original depictions of Hell; and a style capable of vio- lendy asserting struggle, pain, and triumph. The only direct explanation that Campbell ever gave of his intentions in writing The Flaming Terrapin was in a letter to his parents. In it, he stated in part: I have taken this more cheerful view, as I would much sooner feel that I was a Simian in a state of evolution into something higher, than a fallen angel in a state of decline. So, with the deluge as symbolizing the war and its subsequent hopelessness, I have represented in the Noah family, the survival of the fittest, and tried to describe the manner in which they won through the terrors of the storm and eventually colonised the earth. The Terrapin is the symbol for mas• culine energy, (qtd. in Smith 22-23) Much of the passage is too ambiguous for certain meaning. It could suggest a purpose of celebrating the workings of the life force, of creative evolution, and even of the will-to-power striving for the superman. But, in this context, "survival of the fittest," the catchphrase of social Darwinism from Herbert Spencer, may be considered unfortunate, especially in conjunction with the im• perialistic ring of "colonised" (the association of these ideas is particularly Davidsonian) ; in addition, the identification of the Terrapin as the symbol for masculine energy strikes one as lack• ing adequacy. However, the stated preference for being in a state of evolution into something higher, rather than a fallen angel in a state of decline, does emphasize a philosophic oudook in keeping with what Campbell had to say in his lecture about Davidson's and Nietzsche's desire to promote a kind of secular religion. Altogether, Campbell's letter establishes litde more than that The Flaming Terrapin has an evolutionary framework, and also that it is a contemporary poem dealing with modern history. In it he clearly did not wish to show his hand entirely. Near the opening of the poem these lines seem most evidently to body forth a purposive, if not a creative, evolutionary standpoint: This sudden strength that catches up men's souls And rears them up like giants in the sky, ROY CAMPBELL AND JOHN DAVIDSON 79 Giving them fins where the dark ocean rolls, And wings of eagles when the whirlwinds fly, Stands visible to me in its true self. I see him as a mighty Terrapin, . a great machine, Thoughtless and fearless, governing the clean System of active things: the winds and currents Are his primeval thoughts: the raging torrents Are moods of his, and men who do great deeds Are but the germs his awful fancy breeds. (1: 34) The sequence contains a mixture of the mechanistic and the vitalistic, the former being ascendant. The "men who do great deeds" are, however, "but the germs [the mighty Terrapin's] awful fancy breeds." The emphasis on strenuous action is linked with the notion of accompanying thought or imagination, as "fancy" suggests.
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